


Run You Clever Girl... and Remember

by lornesgoldenhair



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Immortality, Memory Related, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lornesgoldenhair/pseuds/lornesgoldenhair
Summary: Clara is immortal, by one means or another, but immortality is a lonely place when you are the one who is running with just your memories for company. Despite her best intentions she seeks out the other half of the Hybrid only to find he remembers more about her than she thought he would. When the memory blocker had failed he carefully stored away the memories he had, unable to just discard them, but wanting her to believe they were gone.Now they're back. Downloaded and reinstalled into his Time Lord Brain. He says that things are different now and she wants to believe it more than anything.But should she risk staying with him when they came so close to destroying each other before? Have they both learned the lessons they needed to learn? Does the Hybrid ever die?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 'Class' Ep1 and also The Husbands of River Song and Hell Bent.

Really, intergalactic TV should be more entertaining. Clara Oswald used the latest mind reading remote control to flick through thousands of channels, projected in three dimensional holograms on the other side of the enormous TARDIS built television room. Yet another problem to unnaturally extended lifespans. All the time in the world to catch up on boxsets, but what to do when you finally run out of series to view?

And craft projects to make?

And places to visit?

Well she hadn’t run out of those, but it couldn’t be adventure all the time.

Clara blew air forcefully through her lips and made a wibbling noise. Until recently she didn’t need to be breathing at all but it had helped her express herself at moments like these, so she never lost the habit and it continued when her lungs began to function again. There was nobody around to appreciate the gesture however. It could be a boring existence in a TARDIS, she was beginning to realise. She never once thought when she was ‘alive’ the first time, that it could even be that way. There was always something amazing happening or just about to happen. Always something to do and marvel at. Always someone…

She stopped her train of thought.

_Not helpful, Oswald, don’t go there._

But it was too late, her mind had raced ahead. Always someone to talk to, laugh with, share the adventure. She stared emptily at the images in front of her, swallowed back any hint of tears that might threaten to spill.

It was a lonely old existence too.

_No, really not helpful. Need to put a halt to this._

She stood and pulled her phone from her trouser pocket, hit dial as she made her way out the room and down the winding corridor to the console and Diner beyond. The tone rang out into time and space. Clara reached the bar and began to put together something comforting with ice-cream.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

‘Hey!’ Ashildr’s voice rang out across the centuries and the miles.

‘Hey, I need you to stop me doing something stupid,’ Clara said resignedly.

‘Oh God not this again, in the background there was a scuffling noise and some grunting. ‘Come on we’ve talked about this. A lot. You can’t ring to say hi, you can’t accidently land in the same place as him, you can’t go there at all. Timelines and stuff. Crossing. Or unravelling, or something bad. _Hybrids!_ There were reasons you two had to split, bad for each other, destructive… Get off me you pig!’

Clara raised her eyebrows. ‘Er… are you OK, do you need a hand?’

‘No, no it’s just this idiot thinks he’s some kind of super warrior. He’s being beaten up by a girl and getting extra irritated with it. You know how it goes. Get… _off_!’

There was a heaving sort of noise and a crash and then Ashildr returned to the phone again. ‘Look, sorry, this isn’t the best time, sort of in the middle of a siege.’

‘Where are you?’ Clara asked with minor interest.

‘Same place you left me, Valmina, just about fifty miles north from where we landed. I joined the dark side and now we’re rampaging across the continent.’

‘Please don’t tell me there’s pillaging.’

‘Um...’

‘Ashildr!’

‘I’m a Viking!’

‘Look I am delighted you’re back in touch with your roots and all, but don’t take it too far.’

‘Yes, yes. But these guys deserve a pillaging, it’s definitely their turn,’ a clang of metal rang out. ‘So as I was saying, not really got much time right now but stick to the principles Clara, no phoning, no stalking him, no accidentally bumping into one another. Go and eat some ice cream, visit a nice spa planet, do something just for Clara, you’ll feel better.’

Great, four billion years old and the best her friend could suggest was comfort food. So much for the wisdom of the ages.

‘I don’t know,’ Clara prodded her melting ice-cream.

‘You can’t spend eternity thinking about him,’ Ashildr warned, ‘That chapter’s over. I’ve been telling you this for hundreds of years Clara, it feels like thousands. You’re wasting time. You have to discover who you are without him.’

Clara pushed the melted desert across the bar away from her and sighed. Easier said than done. Especially when you’re in the time vortex by yourself and feeling lonely.

‘When are you coming back?’ Clara asked hopefully. ‘We could do the spa together, girl time after your siege?’

‘I’ll give you a bell….’ Ashildr said distractedly.

‘Rough guess?’ Clara queried in vain.

A splintering noise and some cursing. ‘I don’t know… ten, fifteen years maybe. I’ll text you.’ And she hung up.

No spa then. She couldn’t quite bear going alone, and she was definitely not in the head space to go somewhere dangerous because she could guess it would end badly with her this distracted. Clara tapped her fingers on the bar and then pushed off and headed to the diner door. Outside the glass she could see stars, somewhere in the horsehead nebula. She wrapped her arms around herself and remembered the day he had named them all for her, pointing them out as they sat on the roof of the TARDIS. The memory made her smile, she only learned a handful of the names but the stars themselves were unforgettable. They shone in his eyes.

Every time she thought of the TARDIS she thought of the message she had left on the blackboard.

_Run you clever boy…_

He was out there being a Doctor just like she told him to, but it was her who remembered.

Memories were torture since her conversion, since the chronolock vanished and she altered forever. When Ashildr wanted to be reminded of something she would look up one of her journals; her own memory unable to retain millions of years’ worth of remembrance. Clara didn’t seem to have that problem; her memories seem to be as good as new, sharp and unforgiving. She hadn’t learned to bring order to them yet. Decades passed by and she remembered every detail. She recalled the Doctor telling her that it was that way for him and how hard that could be, to never have anything slip into the grey uncertain edges of memory; for everything to be exact and unmerciful. To remember every mistake, every person you’d hurt, everything you’d lost.

She hadn’t understood at the time. She knew he was lonely, but she never could have guessed how lonely he was. He probably still was now. Clara mapped the stars out in her mind the way she had learned to do. The ship was floating far from earth in a timezone billions of years before she had even been born. All of these wonders, more hers now than ever and it was never enough. There was only ever one thing she wanted. She heard Ashildr’s warning voice in her mind and chose not to heed it.

Clara drew a breath and stepped back into the console room, entered some co-ordinates and yanked at the lever. Around her the TARDIS engines started and the monitors tracked her progress. Clara checked the destination and date and drew a slightly shaky breath. It wasn’t everyone who could do what she was about to, even Ashildr, old as she was couldn’t take this step, but she felt she had to find her way again.

And to do that she had to start at the beginning.

XXXXXXXXXX

Time Lord memories are complex things. For starters a Time Lord can do so much with them. Delete them, hide them, block them, lock them away for a period, extract them again, magnify them, pump up the volume so much it’s like reliving each moment when you close your eyes. Time Lords can even download them, along with whole personalities and lives and store them in places like libraries and of course, in Cloisters when they die. Time Lord memories are powerful and directly linked to Time, and only Time, and the Time Lord himself can control them.

Memory wiping technology, blockers and deleting devices which were so popular these days simply didn’t touch the sides. Especially if they had been tinkered with by emotional human beings and had been originally set to _homo sapiens_ brains _._ The blocker did nothing but he had to save her, save both of them, so he lied. The blocker didn’t work so he took her image and locked it away in his head, downloaded it and wiped it from his consciousness for a while.

He always intended to get her back. He left a note in his brain as a reminder; he knew she had existed, he knew some basic details, and he knew he had to try and find her.

So it was that Wednesday afternoon that the Doctor was programming his latest invention, a device to accentuate the flow of the current through the console and allow faster upload. To his brain. Life was moving on again for him after a long spell on Darillium. It had taught him more than he had expected it to for someone who had lived thousands of years, twenty-four passed by in a blink. At least they normally would until River taught him the importance of the moment and then later of letting the moment go. It hurt, she explained, but it would hurt more in the longrun if he couldn’t do it.

That was where he went wrong, he suspected, all those years ago. All those billions of years driven mad by love and isolation. Well he had learned, by God had he, and now it was time to unpack a memory or two from the safe place he kept them. He had earned it through the years and felt the time had come. He had moderated his passion, he could be trusted to remember, to not destroy the world in a fit of temper, to adore her without obsession. He would remember her; he had loved her and it wasn’t right for there to be nothing of her left.

He had talked himself into the decision to resurrect the girl called Clara, ignored the plaintive bleeping of the TARDIS and dropped his new friend Bill off for a while. He was a time traveller, he could be gone for a hundred years and she would never know. He felt his hearts lifting in excitement already and he hadn’t even tasted the memories yet. At last the Doctor finished fiddling with the device, slotted it into place, and turned down the corridor behind the console room to where the TARDIS had reluctantly made what he wanted available.

It wasn’t a memory palace as such, more a memory warehouse. Stacked high with boxes full of identical square devices on which a thousand memories or more were stored. It bemused his latest companion when she stumbled across it and tried to understand how actual bits of his past could be stored there on a physical object like a USB stick. He assured her the technology was much more complex. But basically memories were just codes and patterns, he explained, like anything else it can always be translated into something tangible.

Not everything is tangible, Bill had said. Emotion isn’t tangible. Love.

Why were companions always right? He had a feeling that the one before, the one he knew was called Clara and whose details he had locked away, had been exceptionally right all the time. Well he was about to find out, his curiosity was getting the better of him. He had to know more. The trip to the school, the one with the rift in time and Her name on the wall; he’d never come so close to her since the day in the diner when he hadn’t recognised her face. He’d been trying to find it ever since.

He was nervous he realised, hands shaking but he could do this now, he was sure of it. He began shifting boxes, lifting them up and checking the labels. It looked for all the world like he had packed to move house. ‘Trenzalore, The Academy, Rose….’ He’d been kind to himself and packaged them up. He used carry around all the most painful recollections to remind himself of the things he had done.

Until River told him to stop, just stop. He tortured himself and he didn’t deserve it. Pack up, download them, let them fester in the warehouse and free yourself. So he had and his hearts felt lighter at last. She had given him permission to be happier. The Doctor had spent hundreds of years making up for his mistakes. He had done enough now.

River knew he hadn’t had his memory wiped by some flimsy bit of technology back on Gallifrey. It hadn’t even been blocked. She knew that he had hidden Clara away because of how badly it hurt. She knew that as he’d knelt before Clara in the TARDIS that last day he had taken the decision to lock away her image, pack it up with all of her associations and images and hide it at the back of his mind to later be extracted and stored, in the hope that one day, it would be safe to take it all back. She lived their final years together knowing that when they parted he would do just that. And good luck to him. Live a little.

The Doctor lifted another heavy box and paused, looked at the one beneath, jammed right at the back, trying to hide itself away. He looked at its label.

It read, ‘Clara,’ and then beneath that in red pen, ‘Do not open.’ His handwriting, and he remembered scrawling that instruction numbly, shoving the container out of view.

Now he only hesitated for a second before he grabbed the box to his chest and made his way back to the console room; inside it the most precious thing he’d ever known, about to be set free again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara meets an old friend, and the Doctor begins to explore his memories.

It was cold. Not that it affected her in any way as her temperature was on the low side anyway, but the TARDIS and the faintest plume of her breath informed her that it was chilly. Underfoot the grass crunched with frost, it was early still and the sun was not quite risen casting a gloom across the graveyard in front of her. As Clara walked she could just see into the windows of the houses beyond the walls, lights bright as residents ate their breakfast, the first of the Christmas lights adorning some window-frames. It was the beginning of advent, December 1st 2015\. Or a week and a bit after she had died on Trap Street.

This was where a new Clara came into being. She wrinkled her nose, it made her sound like a Zombie. It wasn’t so much that she had risen from a grave but that people now associated her with death. She was gone. If they wanted to be near her they came here.

Things had changed. The original deal was she would have to return to Trap Street one day, complete the circle and die. The original deal had her lying in that grave and she accepted that entirely.

Until she got back to Gallifrey and tried to do just that. Then it all turned upside down. An offer was made. Her blood started pumping and now she didn’t know if she ever would lie in the grave in front of her. That it was there was surely a sign she would, but her timelines were cris-crossing, complicated and dangerous and it was perfectly possible that she wouldn’t. She could end up anywhere now that she could technically die again but could technically live forever too.

Not that it mattered to her family, to them she was already dead and gone. But it mattered to her, to the new Clara it was an important starting point. She understood her life before she ‘died’, hectic, full, unpredictable; but since then, since the Raven, and her conversion, she had more life than purpose. She was drifting on too much time.

She had wondered about going later to her graveside. Not in the day but in the century, but she had decided it would depress her to find her grave untended and abandoned, no family to grieve, no children to make sure the leaves were swept away. She knew only too well that those were things lost to her forever. The one man she would have wanted that with was beyond her now, she would be solitary in that respect. So instead she had come today, when the soil was still freshly dug and only a makeshift wooden cross stood for her. She came when people still cared that she was gone.

She wondered if her name was on the board at school. It was an odd memorial to find in a school hallway, those lost in or around Coal Hill, a list alumni became a list of dead. She wondered how long people looked at it and remembered her, how quickly the pupils and staff returned to just hurrying past. Surely someone would stop and glimpse her name now and then and remember her existence when she had just been a school teacher and not a time traveller.

There were still flowers lying on the hummock of soil above her coffin. Some from her family, her dad and gran, made her eyes sting with sorrow. Others from the school, her colleagues, big bouquets bought with collection money. She could imagine them handing around the tin. All in all though, there weren’t many given how young she had been when she had died. It told her where her heart had really lain, how much she had extracted herself from everyday human life, how much of her lived in space tied to the Doctor.

That’s why this was so hard. Living in a TARDIS was something she loved, but it wasn’t the same without him. He had made the experience complete. Now she had to be her own Doctor, she suddenly understood his loneliness. Even Ashildr came and went, just like his companions had too.

A crunch nearby and she quickly skipped behind a line of trees just in case, thankful when she saw who was approaching. Clara smiled when she saw Rigsy and his little family. Safe, complete and unharmed. He pushed his baby’s pushchair towards the grave and with his girlfriend laid more flowers.

‘Thanks, Clara,’ he said, his voice raw. His girlfriend took his arm and leaned against his shoulder in comfort. ‘I won’t forget, not ever. I’ll be here, every year. Someone’s going to remember you…’

 

XXXXXXXXX

He was seated in the chair by the console with a cap on his head made of wires and plastic that he had cobbled together with bits from the workbench downstairs. It looked a bit primitive but it would do the trick. With his new current accentuator sticking out of the controls he punched in some numbers and instructions and began to feed in the memories to the TARDIS databanks where they would be ‘warmed up,’ and transferred to him. He’d have to start slow but that was OK, he could do it in dribs and drabs, control the urge to just download the lot. He was going to be sensible about this.

Clara. Clara, Clara. He picked up the first square memory chip. Right back at the beginning then, he slotted it in and waited until the images started to trickle through. First her voice, then more than one version of her, confusing. Victorian dress, modern dress. He frowned, this was the echo, he met the echo first. He knew about that, jumping into his time line, he’d just never…seen I. He sighed like a weight had been lifted.

The Doctor smiled as the images grew brighter and more rounded. Oh they had had some fun. Ghosts and Ice warriors and her sharp sense of humour, and outrage. She was stubborn and funny and brave and he found himself chuckling away at her tantrums, her frustration with him. He could see why he had fallen in love, felt some of it stir in him just from those first few memories. She was perfect for him, tiny but strong, pretty, courageous and kind.

The first chip sent a signal to alert him to its status. It had finished its download so he removed it and paused briefly. He’d handled that all right hadn’t he? He wasn’t about to go on a universe destroying rampage. And he was curious now, like a good book, what happened next? He wasn’t angry upset of shaking, he just wanted to read the next chapter.

The TARDIS made a moaning noise, concern in the atmosphere and he patted the console in reassurance.

‘I’m fine, just one more chip and then I promise I will take a break, organise it all… file it all correctly... no conflicts of feeling....’ he tailed off already unpacking the next chip.

He inserted it and turned up the rate of download. The images became brighter, moved quicker until he felt he was living it. It was a good feeling and one he began to recognise. They had fitted so well, they had so much fun. The chip ended half way through an adventure so he allowed himself the next and the next, a warm and happy feeling spreading through him until he stood before a huge dying TARDIS on a planet called Trenzalore.

Until he watched her step into his timestream and sacrifice herself.

And it was then he began to understand why he had locked all of this away. It was vivid and painful and he heard himself shout to her, a younger him, long before the confession dial. He would save her, and see himself do so, but then the trouble really started. They would bind together hard, run too fast towards trouble. They were sharing a TimeStream. They were too alike, too much the same.

Too much in love.

 

XXXXXXXXXX

Clara watched curiously as the elderly man hobbled towards her grave.

Fifty years on Rigsy was still visiting that churchyard and so was Clara. He would bring his grandchildren and tell them the story of the woman with the tattoo and the raven. They would listen enthralled and then run off to play in the graves, avoiding the crows and ravens at all costs. For years she didn’t interrupt but today, for reasons unclear to her, but probably linked to her new sense of time, she felt she had to. There wouldn’t be another chance, she could see it in the air around him. Did the Doctor see that too, did he feel it in people and carry that knowledge with him every day? Did he choose not to look?

Like a ghost Clara emerged from the trees, another cold winter’s day lending her feet a crunching noise on the frozen ground. Rigsy turned and staggered a little, caught himself with his stick.

‘Hey, sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you,’ Clara said holding out one hand.

‘Girl, you’ve been dead fifty years, you can’t just appear without warning,’ he told her off in his best grandfather’s voice before his face broke into a wide smile. ‘Kiddin’ I always figured I’d run into you some day. I thought if I wait long enough they’ll find some way to fix it and bring you back. Unless… Hey I’m not about to die am I? You’re not here to escort me?’

Clara laughed, ‘I’m a time traveller not an angel of death,’ she said watching the odd aura around him pulse. ‘Hey… thanks for the flowers, all the flowers, every year.’

Rigsy wiped his running nose with a gloved finger and looked away. ‘Yeah well, thanks for my life… and for their lives with me. A few flowers is the least I can do when your anniversary comes around…’

Clara bent to examine those lying on her grave. By now she had a headstone which stood proudly by her mother’s as she had always wanted. Rigsy’s flowers were vibrant and beautiful like his art, she couldn’t feel sad looking at them, they were a celebration of life. A card was attached with a simple ‘thank you,’ written on it.

‘At least someone remembers me,’ Clara said, still kneeling by the headstone, still smiling sadly.

Rigsy stepped forward and peered at the grave over the rims of his spectacles.

‘He not been here yet then?’ he asked, ‘Don’t worry he’ll turn up. Always does. Every year, like clockwork.’

Clara looked up sharply at her old friend, ‘Wait. Who?’

‘Who do you think?’ Rigsy said.

‘The Doctor?’ she almost couldn’t say the name for hoping.

Rigsy nodded, his eyes straining to catch his grandchildren at the far end of the graveyard. ‘Uh-huh, every year, on the anniversary. First decade or so nothing special, then later suddenly there’s these flowers. You can tell they aren’t from the florist,’ he laughed, ‘Some kind of weird alien flower.’

‘I never noticed …’ Clara stared ahead of herself, unsure what to think. Had the Doctor seen her there? ‘Maybe he waited until I was gone… so our paths didn’t cross…’

‘I only saw them if I had to come at the end of my day, so yeah, I reckon he waited until there was no-one around… til it was nearly dark,’ Rigsy mused. 'I tried not to disturb him, he looked... you know... choked up.'

All that time he’d been coming here on autumn afternoons, she must have been just minutes or hours from him. All of time and space and she’d probably missed him by less than an hour at least once.

She thought back. The last she had seen him was in the Diner and he’d said he couldn’t remember more than her name, more than vague old stories. Had he worked it out? It was the sort of thing he would do, search for answers. But the flowers, that sentimentality, that made her heart leap and pray for more than the answer to a puzzle. He remembered her, he had to. He wouldn’t come every year to the grave of a forgotten friend, he wouldn’t bring flowers.

‘Hey,’ Rigsy said gently, ‘I gotta see to the kids, but… if you stay here long enough, if you wait… he’ll be here by sunset. I don’t believe he’s ever missed a year. Neither have I of course,’ he said proudly then laughed, ‘Well maybes a couple.’

Clara smiled and got to her feet, offering him a hug. ‘It’s good to see you, Rigsy,’ she said, ‘Some things are worth it. You were worth it.’

She watched as Rigsy carefully made his way across the graveyard with the aid of his stick and thought of how much time had changed her, how little she thought of a decade or two, of how when everything else was changing she didn’t.

She thought of the Doctor’s assertion about mortality. His sad eyes as he told her that immortality wasn’t about living forever, but everyone else dying. Rigsy wouldn’t see another winter, she knew, she felt it in her bones. More and more she understood the Doctor’s point of view.

She prayed the Doctor wouldn’t change, that he’d be there as he was every year. Clara picked a bench under a nearby cluster of yew trees and sat down to wait, the afternoon ticking by and the sun growing lower.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor downloads the rest of his memories but was it a good idea? And Clara spots a Time Lord by her grave.

It took the best part of a week feeding in the memories relating to Clara with only short stops for rest and food. Once he got to the Timestream everything involving her became deeper, multilayered and intense, packed with rich emotion and detail which he had absorbed easily at the time, but which now took time to rebuild. These were memories filled with love and they were an exhausting task.

This he had to admit was more difficult than he had anticipated. He thought he could download each memory again in an orderly way and allocate it not only space but an appropriate emotional response. No going overboard, no losing control. So far he was clinging on by his fingernails but no less addicted to the next chip and the next. It was roulette. He couldn’t stop looking, listening, seeing what came next even when he knew it hadn’t ended well, even though he knew he had had to wipe his memory in the first place and make all of these little chips to protect his sanity.

Good memories were wonderful.

Bad memories tore him apart all over again and he punished himself. Telling himself he should stop, that at the very least he should go slower with the download. But then his mind said the next one might be better. The next might be beautiful and healing so he stayed where he was in his chair; he just carried on feeling drained and vulnerable as he watched each private movie in front of tired eye, as each event settled into his synapses and stimulated his emotions. He kept hoping the next chip held something magical to make it all better.

Time Lord memory was as vivid as day and in order for these snippets to take root properly again in his brain they had to play out as life, each detail, each sound as though he were back there. He watched as they had grown closer and closer, felt the love swell in his chest again and fear grow with it. Obsessive protective fear, he remembered the way he had watched her every move, analysed her speech, taken her aside and almost begged her to stop. He had told her in so many ways how much he needed her to be careful, and now looking back it was a tragedy waiting to happen. Inevitable and doomed.

He had come to the last chips in the box, so far avoided because when he scanned their brief contents with the sonic they flashed up warnings. They covered the Clara’s descent into recklessness, the Raven and Gallifrey, and what had happened to him afterwards.

Sitting on the console waiting to be played. For a minute he considered leaving them there. A little stack of misery. He knew she had died and he suspected he had a ringside seat. He didn’t want to see, but he had to. He had grown to love her again and he owed it to her to be strong enough to look, as he had the first time, not to leave her alone.

So he pressed download and sat in the dark letting those moments wash over him. It could only have been a matter of minutes but it was such a depth of feeling, such a vivid memory that each second played out slowly, again and again as his brain tried to deal with it. It didn’t know what to do with such pain. It didn’t fit and it sucked the air from his lungs as he wrestled with it.

He must have grieved, he thought, and healed gradually. Maybe if he remembered that process he could settle these memories. So he tackled the confession dial.

It wasn’t contained in those final few chips. He had to go back to the warehouse for this one and had hoped he might avoid it completely. He would have to upload memory after memory because he could still lay claim to all four billion years by a fluke of Time. Even though he had been reborn and reborn every few weeks his Time Lord brain still somehow absorbed every moment. He opened the door to his store room and counted what was there. There were boxers and boxes and boxes of memory, all roughly the same. All painful. A warehouse full of his grief for Clara, the identical containers lining the walls and dwarfing the rest of his existence. He couldn’t avoid it, not when it loomed over his life that way.

Resignedly he brought up the contents on a screen and watched himself defeat the Veil. He thought that a single tour or two around that fort would be memory enough but he added another and another. Curious about each turn around the dial. Curious at how fresh his grief remained and how powerful it felt. Had he really lived through all of this for her? He analysed each turn around his own private hell; his desperation and loneliness. His love never wavered.

He ended up reinstalling all of it and sitting that night in his library replaying important parts. The painting he slowly did over centuries. The way her memory meant he never gave up hope. He’d been missing that these last few years; the drive and determination she gave him. He knew it was a fine balance between that and obsession but…

… he needed to remember what love felt like and why she above all others had commanded that kind of power. It fascinated him and he had to admit it was intoxicating. Nothing else in his life had come close to Clara and now he could see why again, could feel it in his blood. But he was in control, he told himself. This time he had knowledge at his fingertips, he could learn from his mistakes; had learned from them on Darillium. This time around he wouldn’t go wrong.

The Doctor emptied the warehouse boxes and tidied the neglected console room. He was running late for something. Somewhere he went every year, waiting in the trees until the woman he recognised, but didn’t know, had left. This time he went not out of duty to a name he knew he had loved, but out of love for the woman who owned that name.

She’d be there, he was certain of it.

 

XXXXXXXXXXX

 

He proved to be a creature of routine, even if that routine was yearly. From her secluded vantage point Clara watched the TARDIS dematerialise near a particularly large angel figure and the doors open, casting bright light over the darkness of the early evening. The sun had set an hour before and now only the eerie orange light of streetlamps lit the graveyard. The ground sparkled with it like embers. It made her think of a time she had stood amongst fire and threatened to destroy each key to the TARDIS; a time she betrayed him and he just took it. She’d learned since how rare that kind of love is.

There he was, just as she remembered, and it brought tears to her eyes to see him. Tall, elegant, his hair thick and silver, the Doctor, dressed in the velvet coat she had loved so much, picked his way through the graves with a practised movement. She wondered if he wore that jacket for her, if he associated it with the message she had left for him, or if he actively remembered she had told him it suited him. How much did he remember?

She watched him come towards her, her pulse thumping. His path was well chosen and exact, practised for years, and he quickly found himself in front of Clara’s headstone. He stood a moment, the bouquet of oddly shaped and coloured flowers in one hand. He bent and inhaled its scent and then jiggled the bouquet a little activating something within, a biological secret from an alien world, she supposed. The flowers glowed brighter than the streetlamps, a cool blue. He must always have waited until she was gone, she would have noticed those on her grave before now.

He bent slightly as though he was about to lay them next to Rigsy’s, when he stopped and turned slightly, cast his eyes towards the trees where Clara lurked, watching. He frowned, the light from the flowers casting shadows on his face. For a second he looked about him and she could see him deciding what to do next. Finally, he looked down at his bouquet and addressed it.

‘If you want me to give these to you personally you’d best come out,’ he said. ‘I am assuming it’s you, I’ve seen you here before but I usually let you finish before I make an appearance, less complicated that way, what with the memories and the hybrid and so on….’ He tilted his head back and looked at the stars. ‘Well…’ he said, ‘I had half hoped you’d be here…’

There was a beat and then he added softly, ‘Clara….’ The old way he said her name made something in her chest break. He knew her, she could hear it in is voice. She was no longer just a name. She stood and stepped around the bench and trees and saw him carefully lower his head again, let his eyes fall into her gaze. He appraised her silently for a moment as she approached and she saw him swallow hard.

The Doctors cheeks were damp. Clara reached for his arm and in a slightly unpredictable movement he held the flowers out towards her in an attempt to look relaxed which failed utterly. Clara took them and did as he had done, inhaling their scent.

‘The one place a time traveller must never go,’ he said, ‘Is their own grave. That’s a basic one. You remember where we ended up when I did it… Impossible Girl.’

‘I know. Don’t regret it though.’

‘It’s still a bad idea, Clara.’

‘Probably.’

He nodded as though that was all the repercussion he could manage. Clara stepped a little closer towards him and he watched her side on. The surreal atmosphere was throwing her. They hadn’t seen each other for decades. So much had gone on between them, both in happy times shared and painful separation. Here he was, she was close enough to touch him, but she stood uncertain and frozen, her brain racing too fast to be of use.

‘I needed to… I don’t know… ground myself?’ she tried to explain and watched him nod slightly, ‘Find a starting point for this version of me? I started coming here years ago. It reminds me that everyone dies eventually, of what it is to be human, I need to hang onto that and remind myself one day I have to go back.’ Clara said.

‘How long have you been… like this now?’ he asked. She could feel him looking her over, frowning, unsure if he liked what he was seeing. It must be obvious to him, more so than other people. He would perceive the change.

‘Oh a few decades, I lose track, I’m looking good om it though,’ she joked. He didn’t respond or find it funny and she immediately regretted it. He nodded again more to himself than to her.

‘Yes its quite the achievement,’ he said with a touch of bitterness.

‘Doctor?’ she asked, nervous of his answer, but wanting confirmation. ‘Do you remember me or have you just worked out who I must be, pieced the clues together?’

He finally raised his eyes to meet hers although his body looked guarded. ‘Oh I remember, Clara, I remember all of it,’ he let slip a tiny smile, ‘All of it,’ he sighed. ‘You did a good job on the memory wiping device, it was about as useful as a television remote, but I played along. We needed time apart for everyone’s sake. So I boxed up my memories of you for years just to allow me to live outside of misery… but I’ve recently put them back.’ He held her eye, ‘There’s nothing missing.’

‘So you remember… all of it…?’ Clara double checked, ‘No blank bits?’

‘No blank bits,’ he looked at her with meaning, ‘You must know how that works by now?’

She was too absorbed in his confession to respond. ‘The Cloisters?’ she asked, ‘You remember them?’

The Doctor looked up at her sharply and even in the gloom she saw him blush. ‘Y..yes.’

Clara giggled in despair. ‘All this time,’ she said in mock frustration, ‘All this time you could have remembered and we’ve been living lies.. _again_. Why do we never get it right? Why do we always cover things up, or lie, or exaggerate?’

‘Because we care,’ the Doctor said, ‘Too much as we demonstrated last time. Because we try to do the right thing but its obscured by… by… how we feel. It was safer not to contact you, to pack it all away for a time. I couldn’t… I didn’t trust myself.’

She looked at him sadly and knew what he said was no exaggeration. The lengths he had gone to to bring her back were immeasurable. But she wanted so badly to believe in change.

‘We’ve had a little time out, maybe we’re better at this stuff now. Besides, the universe hasn’t ended and we’re both still in it,’ she said hopefully.

‘But not together,’ he observed wistfully his mood altogether melancholy. She thought she saw him take a small step towards her as though he was being restrained by an unseen force but defying it anyway. He opened his mouth then shut it again, stuck between what he felt he could say and what he could manage.

The wind rustled through the trees behind them and played in Clara’s hair. She swiped it back from her face.

‘You must be cold,’ the Doctor said.

‘I don’t really get cold,’ she smiled.

‘Ah,’ he considered her with something like disappointment in his eyes, ‘No, not anymore…’ he glanced at the TARDIS unsure of what to do next.

‘But yes I would like to come in for a coffee,’ Clara said.

‘Coffee…’ he was thinking something over, she could feel it, something he was struggling with. Was he regretting speaking to her already? Then he seemed to draw himself up a little. ‘Coffee…’ he gestured for her to go first towards the TARDIS, ‘After you, Clara Oswald.’


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bumper chapter to make up for a quiet week.
> 
> The Doctor and Clara reunite, and Clara's offer is revealed with devastating consequences.

Clara, the woman he had come to know again in his memories, was less than twenty feet from him. He could feel her, sense her and if he chose to tune in, he would hear her, he was sure. He bent over her grave and listened, expecting the crunch of frost or twigs, discovering instead her breath, her heartbeats tapping out her pulse. Things that ought to be silent. Things that stopped when he plucked her from her timeline and trapped her in a moment before death.

Clara was alive again. Properly alive that was. The force of that hit him unexpectedly hard. He could feel tears rising and something clutching at his chest. He had saved her only to have her life a lifeless existence. How he had gone over the implications of that since he remembered; he had tormented himself for his selfishness and regret. She would have no pleasures in life, no eating, no drinking, no sleeping, no physiological change of any kind; excitement, fatigue, discomfort, arousal. She would never age or bear children. She would never die until she chose to go back to Trap Street. Clara would exist in a constant state of being, and in her case, perhaps a constant state of fear, adrenaline frozen in her veins, waiting for the Raven to strike.

And now here she was, unfrozen, released, alive. For a moment he couldn’t think how and for that moment it didn’t matter. It was the most joyous thing he could ever have wished for. Clara was alive and he was forgiven, he could feel it. He could feel it in the warmth with which she was watching him.

He could feel it. Now there was an odd thing.

The Doctor hesitated. How could he feel it without trying, without contact? How could she be alive? His mind began to question and to query, leaving behind the pure joy and increasing his concerns. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t right at all.

Oh no.

The heartbeats he could hear, the forgiveness he could feel. Suddenly he knew the cause of her cure and the tears of happiness he had felt rising now fell slowly in regret, wetting his cheeks. The fault still lay with him; his guilt was as great as ever. Had she been so desperate to restart her metabolism, live a life that she had made a deal? Was this really something she had chosen, perhaps in some vain attempt to find him again? Or had it been imposed upon her, an odd punishment for the Impossible Girl. Did she even understand the implications? The true nature of what she had become? Perhaps she had been tricked, she wouldn’t be the first. A pretty package it made, but laced with troubles that only became obvious long after the conversion had taken place.

Had she noticed yet? It was probably too early, Clara had that yet to come and oh how his hearts sank at that.

He knew at that moment he couldn’t turn his back. He knew she might blame him in the end, after all if she had never met him her life would be so different. She might hate him one day when the true implications of her state hit her, but he would just have to be strong. There was no-one else to guide her. They knew that though didn’t they? That was probably half the reason they had done this. So he would have to watch the woman he loved, be tortured by something which never should have been given to her; watch her slowly realise the gift she thought would help her, would become her prison.

And in the meantime the Doctor could feel them pulling together, an old tie, like a string, connecting and urging him on. He could almost hear the TARDIS from where he stood, pleading with a high serious of bleeps for him not to speak her name, to keep the Hybrid apart, and this new development was almost certainly a warning sent back along his timeline. She had altered and their potential for danger was much greater with the power she now had.

He should leave. He should heed it and head back to the TARDIS, give no indication he had felt her there. He glanced towards the trees and back at his ship.

But he was all she had this side of the end of the universe, and They knew it. She must feel quite alone and that hurt him. After all, he did, he understood it, and now they were even more similar. He’d only known her a week, but really it was millennia, freshly packed back into his memories, and he couldn’t turn away from that or the thing he had discovered tonight.

He let her know he felt her there and waited for her response, hoping it would dry his tears.

 

XXXXXXXXX

‘Coffee?’ Clara said again trying to spur him into action. He’d offered it and then become befuddled and awkward, just like he always had been, but the more she looked at him the less awkward he became until eventually he was beautiful. The Doctor, lost in analysis, studying her hard, each feature, each word and the light from the TARDIS at his back casting a halo around him. He looked like an Angel.

‘Coffee,’ he muttered tilting his head and looking at her again, the a spell broken he straightened up and gestured for her to go ahead, ‘Yes, coffee …’ The Doctor ushered her a few steps and hovered by her side until she took the lead and picked her way towards the TARDIS. She could hear him behind her, the sound of his steps, but he didn’t say a word and it unsettled her. She supposed it must be hard, to see her again from nowhere, in a graveyard of all places, but for herself she felt excitement and joy. She wanted to chatter away and throw her arms around him, cry and laugh and tell him everything, but there was an invisible shield around him that stopped her and made her nervous.

He knew didn’t he.

When she reached the TARDIS doors she half expected them to shut in her face. Never her biggest fan the ship would look to protect the Doctor and her new state could arouse suspicion, upset the Old Girl until it was all explained, even then it wasn’t likely to be popular. Then again, she prayed, the ship had its own psychic abilities and might be able to sense her intentions. She wasn’t on some secret mission to hurt him, she just missed him so badly. If anything she wanted to protect him.

Clara stepped through into the console room and hesitated, one hand on the rail, glancing behind her. The doors had stayed open, allowing her to enter. She felt like she had passed an exam but when she turned back she could see that even if the TARDIS had ok’d things, he was still watching her with wary blue eyes. She tried to smile and make some conversation, desperately trying to erase the several hundred years of nothing that hung between them, but just where did she start?.

‘You haven’t redecorated then,’ she tried, ‘I like it.’ She glanced across at him but his face remained set and mirthless. The look he always had when trying to contain an emotion, positive or otherwise. He was inscrutable when he wanted to be. Clara looked away and ran her eyes over the fittings.

Inside very little had changed. He hadn’t altered the décor significantly or the layout of the console room. The same roundels and railings, perhaps a richer colour scheme but one that was subtle. While she was gazing around her he snapped his fingers and the doors still shut in response, just as they had always done. She listened for a moment to the low thrum of the engines and breathed in the scent around her. Leather bound books and technology in equal parts, mixed with a delicate citrus overtone she knew came from him. It was home. It always had been, and she fought with the urge to fall into its arms and rest at last.

‘Coffee…’ he said suddenly and she looked back at him over her shoulder to find he had stopped his wary watching and sprung into terrified action. ‘Coffee, coffee,’ the Doctor glanced up at her a little panicked, like he hadn’t had a houseguest in centuries, ‘Coffee in paper cups or mugs, take away coffee? Fresh coffee? Instant? I…I can’t remember what you take,’ he added softly. Clara thought she could see pain in his eyes when eh said it, pain from such a little thing, but she knew why.

He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember coffee… or all of it? How much did he know about her really? He said he had no blank bits but how could he tell? She suddenly realised she was scared to find out the extent of his memories. She wanted to pretend things were as they had always been. She could feel him inside worrying, turning over his thoughts again and again, wandering down increasingly catastrophic roads with them. Physically, when she met his eye she saw he was as nervous as she was, inanimate with anxiety.

He was never good at this stuff, and still wasn’t, she understood with a small smile of reminiscence, so she stepped forward and tried to take the lead in this, a difficult social engagement if ever there was one. She’d have to do some cards for him later and tried to think what one should put on the one for being reunited with the person you love after centuries. Clara smiled bravely.

‘Calm, Doctor, coffee in mugs is fine. We don’t need to go anywhere especially for coffee.’

‘But we always used to…’

‘End up in Glasgow, or get lost entirely and land in trouble. No, Doctor I don’t want you to vanish for three weeks retrieving beverages. Let’s just go to the kitchen.’

‘If I vanished you could probably locate me now, you have a TARDIS of your own,’ he smiled shyly and made his way to the corridor with Clara closely following.

‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly, ‘All TARDIS have tracking ability on one another, I learned that early…’

The Doctor looked down at her and sideways as they walked.

‘Did you? Yes a very handy ability….Did you ever track me?’ he asked trying to seem nonchalant.

‘Um… well…’

‘Because I tried to track you and for some reason… you never showed up.’

Clara bit her lip and looked away.

‘Blocked the signal?’ he queried.

‘I didn’t,’ she confessed, ‘Ashildr used to try and keep it off, both ways, so you couldn’t see me and vice versa. She thought it was unhealthy of me to watch… I used to look when I was up all night. Back then I didn’t need any sleep at all of course…’ she stopped suddenly when she became aware of his frown. Oh he knew alright. Clara quickly continued her story, ‘but… it was comforting to see your TARDIS and I thought maybe if you could see my signal now and then… even if you didn’t really know why…’

He nodded next to her. ‘You were right,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘It was comforting,’ the Doctor went on, ‘Except back then I didn’t know who I was looking at. Just this blip on the screen. I tried to get to it a few times but the Old Girl never let me get within any kind of range. I had a theory it was the girl called Clara… you I mean… but she never let me near. Still… sometimes at night I’d watch…’

‘We sound like we were watching each other then… from time to time, so to speak,’ Clara said.

They reached the kitchen and Clara sat obediently while he flitted about, her eyes wide, taking in all the old familiar things she could see, right down to the cooking utensils she had brought on board years ago that still occupied cupboards and shelves. Despite all her efforts her own TARDIS had never really had the same charm. She suspected because it never had him.

He made coffee. Well he started to and then Clara had to take over. It seemed he’d forgotten in the time since he’d seen her how to go about mundane human chores. She handed him a mug but he couldn’t settle in the kitchen so she thought hard about somewhere more relaxed and the TARDIS, to her great surprise, came to her rescue. The library popped up opposite and within that a cosy little corner with a fire and plenty of cushions. She watched the Doctor adjust them over and over and eventually took them away from him.

‘It’s ok, relax,’ she said ad watched him exhale very deliberately. ‘I know this is… odd,’ she added wishing she had a better word for their situation. ‘I don’t really know where to start either.’

He was brushing down his trousers now, fiddling with the material, picking at it. She’d forgotten how unsettled he could be, how overactive. He looked as though he was psyching himself up for something and she supposed that was fair enough. She’d been sitting by the yew trees knowing this was coming. He’d arrived at her graveside expecting to find her dead. That would throw anyone.

At last, slowly he raised his eyes and she very deliberately smiled when they locked with hers.

‘Clara,’ he said.

‘Um… yes,’ she said lightly.

‘You’re here. After all this time. In my TARDIS,’ he smiled cautiously, watching her every move and expression. She could almost feel him trying to read her mind, battling with himself. It was considered rude just to dive in there and flick through somebody’s thoughts so he was restraining himself although he could have done it so easily, she was no expert at blocking people yet.

From him she felt a vague sense of terror. It had to be coming off him pretty strong for her unpractised ability to notice, but there it was. He so desperately wanted to be happy, but he feared something too. She tried as much as possible to ‘feel’ calming and reassuring to him, to try and transmit those sensations but she had a long way to go when it came to controlling her thoughts. Still he seemed to pick up on something and he seemed to relax a little as he said again, ‘Clara Oswald…Back in my TARDIS after all this time,’ with a sigh.

‘Yes.’ Clara grabbed one of his hands and squeezed, but wasn’t prepared for what came next. A jolt of purple electricity behind her eyes as they connected which nearly knocked her backwards, but which he seemed to deal with easily. She gasped and he tilted his head, looking at her with interest for a moment, considering what he saw.

He smiled properly then, a full, uninhibited smile that crinkled his eyes and warmed her chest. ‘Two phrases I never thought I’d say again together,’ he said.

‘It’s a special occasion,’ she confirmed.

‘It is,’ the happiness in his eyes threatened to spill over and she sagged with relief, his concerns were still there but less evident; his joy at seeing her had supplanted them all, ‘And as such I would like to make a request,’ he was saying.

‘Oh?’ she sat up a little straighter, trying to drag her mind into the current setting.

‘Well…. I know its perhaps a little out of character, but you always liked these things and I thought maybe I could request….a hug?’ he said. He watched her with a little of the same wariness as he had in the graveyard. Did she still do hugs? His face wondered, or had things changed beneath the surface of her skin?

Well yes they had, and she knew he sensed it, but that part was still pure Clara.

‘I have waited decades for that request!’ she said reassuringly.

‘I’m a little slow on the uptake,’ he said.

Coffee was abandoned. Clara pulled herself into the Doctor’s waiting arms and squeezed him tightly, overwhelmed by the feel and scent of him, the tight hold of his arms. All that uncertainty which had so far plagued them both was forgotten. This was where they belonged, together again. Damn the Hybrid, damn everything outside of that room, of that embrace. He was right there and a rush of love nearly knocked her backwards as it poured from his psyche. Without thinking she drew back slightly and pressed her lips to his.

He startled almost immediately, staring at her wide -eyed until she realised what she had done. She held one hand to her mouth.

‘Sorry! Sorry. Carried away. I just…’ she looked at him wistfully, ‘I have missed you, you daft old man, so much.’

Clara watched him again wrestle with what to do next until something in him gave way. ‘I’ve missed you too,’ he said roughly and before she could reply he was kissing her, properly this time, his arms tight around her body and his lips parting. Clara responded in kind, arousal in her blood, pumping hard around her vessels, making her burn. She thought of the Cloisters and of the things they had said. Nothing truly had changed, and his kiss felt the same. The Hybrid, the echo of that legend, hovered at the edges of her thoughts, but she wouldn’t let it in.

But Clara couldn’t keep everything at bay. The memory of the Hybrid, her parting from the Doctor, the years without him, the offer she had accepted and the changes in her. She hadn’t strength to build barriers high enough and the knowledge was leaking back into her consciousness.

_Not now, not now…_

Something was wrong and something had changed. They both knew it, Clara was just waiting for the topic to be raised and the Doctor had been afraid to raise it, but it couldn’t be put off forever. Their kiss slowed, their touches became more gentle and the Doctor pulled away from her, his eyes searching hers. Clara felt a cloud pass over her and knew she would have to tell him properly, explain the unsaid truth between them.

Slowly he placed one palm between her breasts, and waited, counting beats; she knew what was coming.

‘How?’ he said quietly.

‘They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,’ she said straightforwardly, simplifying the awful heated arguments of that day, down to the basic truth.

‘Which was?’ the Doctor asked, and she sensed his fear already, what had she wanted so badly that she would risk repercussions so huge? ‘Clara?’ he asked again. ‘What was their offer?’

‘To live,’ Clara said, ‘Properly, to be unfrozen…’

There was utter defeat in his expression and it shocked her. She had thought he would be pleased somehow, shocked at first but then a form of relief.

‘And you said yes, straight away didn’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes, but not for the reason you think. It wasn’t just about me; I’d accepted I was on borrowed time,’ she saw him nod.

‘I know you didn’t do it for yourself Clara, I almost wish that _had_ been your motivation.’

‘Doctor, They told me that…’

‘Let me guess,’ he said sadly, ‘They told you one day soon I would need you? To keep travelling and that the timelines had finally come right? That the universe wouldn’t end as predicted and all that Hybrid stuff was rubbish? That you could help when the time came?’

Clara stared at him. ‘How…?’

‘Clara I’ve been playing their games for thousands of years, nothing is ever free. They are sitting at the close of the universe, passing time until everything ends. What better way to pass the time than to watch the chaos they create? Its entertainment for them. They are like the Gods in ancient Greece in that respect, throwing lightning down onto their people, playing games of cat and mouse.’

‘No… no it wasn’t like that, they told me I could help you, they transformed me, with the Elixir and the Schism,’ Clara took his hand back again and made him feel her heartbeats. ‘Two hearts,’ she said, ‘I’m like you now, a Time Lord, a Time Lady in my case…’

‘Clara… oh Clara I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re like me now in more ways than one.’

She hesitated and frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean before you might have taken one of their TARDIS but they were never really going to come after you to get it back.’

‘No, I guess they had a few spare,’ she said chirpily. The Doctor gave her a curious withering look. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ she retorted when she saw his expression. He was unnerving her.

‘This is serious Clara. They will use you in any way they can. Now that you are a Time Lady, an inexperienced biological Time Lady with no Academy training to protect you, they have powers enough to hear you, sense you, find you…manipulate you, use you… to get to me. To do anything they like. Track you, take possession of you, make you walk, talk and act the way they want.’

Clara could feel her pulse rising as he spoke. ‘What?’ she whispered, horrified.

‘They could have you stick in knife in me or navigate the TARDIS into a moon to crash land,’ he elaborated. ‘You are incredibly vulnerable. You’re like a sleeper waiting to be activated for their fun. And on top of that, all of that other stuff, the Hybrid, the universe, it still applies,’ he continued.

‘Oh my god…’ she breathed. ‘I’m a time bomb.’

The Doctor held her gaze, grim and pale. ‘Yes, Clara. Before you were one of times tourists, frozen maybe, but relatively free to roam, but now…’

‘What am I now?’ she asked, dreading his answer.

‘A ticking clock, a danger to everyone around you, pursued and shunned at the same time. You’re like me, just as you said, except more exposed that I ever was. A beacon in time for them to latch onto. Nothing will ever be the same for either of us.’

She shook her head not understanding and he leaned into her slightly to whisper, the tone of his voice unreadable. Was it fear or excitement or both? It sent a shiver through her whichever it was, and a sense that a new and even more dangerous adventure was about to begin.

‘Run… you clever girl,’ he breathed, ‘because they’re coming.’

She barely had a second to respond, before the Cloister Bell rang out.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cloister Bell is ringing and consequences are making themselves known again.

Clara ran. Straight out of the library and up into the console room, the Doctor at her heels; across the walkways and up the stairs. She slammed into the TARDIS doors and yanked at them with both hands wrapped around the handles, back and forth, back and forth, but the ship wasn’t budging.

‘Come on!’ she ordered it, beating her fists on the panels.

‘She won’t open up…’ the Doctor was at the console behind her, frantically hitting switches. Above him the lights flashed red in warning and the Cloister bell kept tolling.

‘She has to,’ Clara spun on one foot, ‘I’m putting you in danger. Her first priority is always to keep you safe…’

‘Yes, yes it is,‘ his answer was distracted, his head bowed as he punched co-ordinated and wrestled with levers and then popped back up again as he looked horrified at the monitors. ‘Judoon,’ he said quietly.

‘So she has to open the doors, let me out, if I run they will follow me. The Time Lords must be instructing them on where to find me, I’m the beacon remember? ’

‘You are… but beacons shine brightly Clara, bright enough to see the area around them. The Time Lords already know I’m here… you running now, makes no odds. I quite agree the Judoon are probably too stupid to notice who is who,’ he said referring to what was outside, ‘but the cats out the bag, you’re broadcasting your brain straight to Gallifrey without even knowing it. The Time Lords have spotted me already and they’ve sent some Judoon in response.’

‘We’ve only been together a few minutes!’ she moaned. Clara turned again to the door, tried to push or pull it open and the TARDIS made an angry noise around her.

‘Let me… out!’ she demanded, ‘I could still confuse them, put them off….’

‘No!’ The Doctor at last he looked up from what he was doing, ‘The doors are sealed. That is an end of it. We need to move fast and get out of here, and we need to do it without the Time Lords following straight away. We need breathing space… thinking space…’ he was half thinking out loud what to do next, but all Clara could think was the solution must lie with her.

There was a huge rumble from outside and the TARDIS shook to her core. Both of them staggered and had to grasp onto the ship for balance, relying on it to protect them both from whatever that had been.

‘I have my own TARDIS near by!’ Clara suddenly declared, and felt herself getting angrier, more frustrated. Finally they’d met again and all she had done was bring chaos and enemies raining down on him. She had to get away. She had done so much damage to the Doctor already, broken both his hearts. Now if everything he said was true, she was only serving to aid the Time Lords in finishing him off. She had a TARDIS, yards from his, she just had to get to it. Once there she could fly anywhere, lead them a merry dance and keep going. If she could master the mind control thing maybe she could even persuade them she had no idea where he was…

‘I can run,’ she said not letting go of the door, ‘Just like you said, run and get to my ship….’ But his face had grown paler in the brief time it took her to speak and shew knew somehow the problem had magnified.

‘It’s too late,’ he insisted with a dry swallow, and with a sweep spun the screen he had been watching at towards her. Clara was torn and looked at the door briefly, saw it remained unmoving and bolted. Reluctantly but swiftly she stepped away, focusing on the stream of events outside now playing out on the monitor, focusing on the Doctor’s pale skin.

She was about to say something like, ‘I can manage it,’ or ‘That’s not that bad,’ she was a Time Lady now, she could run fast and survive a lot of damage, but then she looked again. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. A Time Lord or two on the hunt? A handful of the Judoon as backup? Not this anyway. She paused and felt time still around her, aware of the Doctor still working beside her but seeing him now in slow motion. It kept happening since her conversion, these odd lapses in time. Things seemed fast or slow or frozen, she could see futures and pasts but couldn’t always differentiate. And she had no control. It scared her witless when it happened, the things she saw, and moreso felt. Clara glanced at the Doctor; he could teach her, he could teach her if…

‘Clara look at the screen, come back to the present,’ he snapped at her and she quickly looked back. She could see in his eyes that he knew what was going on in her head. She tried to focus again on the now.

No, not a Time Lord, or a team of them. Not a handful of Judoon to make up the numbers. She looked amongst the gravestones and the trees, saw the creatures moving through the dark, regimented, powerful, heavy set and well armed. Because that’s what they were, an army, an army to hire.

Judoon. Line and after line of them, moving towards the TARDIS.

‘Oh my God! There are hundreds of them. Where are they coming from?’

‘A time rift,’ he explained, ‘The Time Lords opened a gateway and they are pouring through. There’s nothing we can do. There are too many of them Clara, I’m not letting you out there…’

‘I’m fast, and I’m less clumsy than they are, I could dodge in and out…’

‘No.’

‘I could! Look at them…’

‘I am and I’m saying no,’ he passed one hand over his forehead and she recognised the motion as a sign of stress. He started ruffling his hair, trying to think, trying to find a solution. On the screen the Judoon had surrounded her TARDIS, half hidden in trees and darkness, and were cocking their weapons.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she squealed, ‘Don’t you bloody dare that’s my ship!’ Shots rang out and glass shattered, she screamed at the monitor as the front of her Diner exploded. In the console room the Doctor’s TARDIS moaned in sympathy.

‘It’ll be fine. It’s superficial. They can’t harm the body of the ship,’ the Doctor said, half reassuring, half distracted, ‘Once this has all settled the ship will repair, we just have to stay….’

More shots and the neon bulbs blew out, glass shattered, the windows fell in. Clara grew pale with anger. She suddenly turned and kicked the console hard to the Doctors horrified response. He grabbed at her wrists and dragged her away from the machinery.

‘Clara, Clara, not, you must stop this. The TARDIS she’s protecting you…’

‘I don’t want protecting, I’m supposed to be protecting _you,_ as is she! That’s why I tried to you’re your memories! That’s why the TARDIS didn’t let you navigate anywhere near me. She’s not protecting anyone by letting me stay here. I want out, I’ll get to my ship take off and leave and if you do the same thing, leave at the same time they might get confused, they might not know who is where and we can vanish again. It could work, it could protect you, so why isn’t the old bitch helping me now?’ she asked desperately.

She could see him toiling, his brain somehow becoming overwhelmed. Too much information. Memories sparking off memories, emotions; fear and love hijacking his thoughts and leading him down unused and unknown roads.

‘Please,’ he begged her with his eyes, and lowered his voice, ‘She has her own priorities. I have told her what you mean to me, she’s seen each memory I’ve restored as I have gone about it and she has felt some of what I have felt. Before the last couple of weeks it was her job to keep you away from me but I begged her to understand. She’s trying but none of this is sitting well with her, she is tolerating you Clara but if you push it…’

Clara’s eyes flashed, ‘If I push it? What? Will she open the bloody door so I can get my own ship and try and sort this mess?’ her voice grew louder and louder and she finalised her request with another boot to the TARDIS structure, this time the bannister close by. The ship let out a high angry wail and suddenly the doors flew open, she heard them behind her crashing against the wall.

‘Thank you!’ she yelled at the ceiling and then looked back at her companion.

‘Clara!’ she could see the Doctor’s eyes fixed on something in the doorway.

‘Whatever it is,’ she started.

‘Just… turn around,’ he said holding out a hand and not looking at her, ‘Just turn around and look at it, and _keep_ looking at it…’ Don’t stop looking, Clara…

She felt her pulse rise and knew immediately what it was. The Time Lords really were encouraging everyone and everything to play. Slowly she turned and came face to face with the huge angel that had been standing close to the TARDIS when she had seen it arrive. She should have known.

‘Don’t even blink…’ he whispered. Clara stared hard.

‘What are we going to do?’ she could see from the periphery of her vision the rows of Judoon getting closer. Having done some damage to her ship they had, as the Doctor predicted, been unable to do much more and decided to aim elsewhere in their quest to find them both. They were crossing the graveyard in pursuit of her, and there were plenty of them. She wondered if they had the wit to notice the TARDIS and to add two plus two. They just seemed to march forward on orders, seeking the beacon that was Clara in the hope the Doctor would be there too. Would they get a reward, she wondered?

‘Keep looking at it,’ the Doctor said, ‘Can you do that for me? No distractions, no glancing away, no matter what happens outside…’

‘Why? What’s going to happen outside?’ she asked in hushed tones, centimetres from the angel’s face.

‘Well there is the small matter of the ever expanding Judoon Army, and a time rift,’ the Doctor said, ‘And one won’t be dealt with until the other has gone. They just keep pouring through, the Time Lords have probably hired thousands of them, they love a show. They know you’re here and your head is broadcasting updates…outwith your control… I need to shut all of this down and it might take something spectacular to do that now…’

She could feel an old anxiety building in her as he spoke just as she could feel his old gung-ho style of attack getting ready.

‘You said you were going to leave the Time Rift alone….’ She hissed. ‘Said we just had to get away as fast as possible, you were going to leave the Judoon army behind… ’

‘That’s before someone demanded we open the TARDIS door,’ he hissed back. ‘And before the small matter of a weeping Angel standing on the doorstep. Not to mention the Judoon army being ten times bigger than I thought it might be. Now we have to seal off the rift just to get control of all this again.’

‘Can’t we just shove the angel out and fly off?’ she asked desperately. For a moment the Doctor looked at her with concern, a pause in all the chaos.

‘Clara we can’t let hundreds of thousands of Judoon pour out over London,’ he said quietly, ‘We can’t let Angels come to life just so we can get away. People will die, lots of people. This has to be dealt with now. Don’t you see? Don’t you remember?’

‘Remember?’

‘The Cloisters, the things we said, the promises we made?’ he went on. ‘We went too far the last time. We were the Hybrid, willing to go to all lengths for one another. If we fly off now, we’d be making the same mistakes.’

Clara felt a stab of guilt. ‘Oh…. yes…’ her eyes stared into the grey stone of the lifeless angel and it seemed to mock her pain. ‘Yes, you’re right. This is how it has to be.’

‘Clara I was all for packing up and jetting off somewhere where I thought it was just going to be a handful of troublemakers. I could have taken them out as we took off, but this… how can I leave this behind now I can see how much damage it will do?’

She could feel her anger morphing into something more tender. This was all her fault, and worse than that she was falling for the same old mistake. The one they had both made in one form or another in the past. The one that had cost him four billion years and his memories. She loved him too much. She was lonely and tempted and had thought herself stronger. She had wanted to see him again so desperately that she had found him at last but she wasn’t in control even if she told herself she was. She had messed with time lines, upset time and space and now London was being invaded by an army lead by her unstoppable psychic signal. She felt tears spring to her eyes.

‘No….’ the Doctor’s voice rose an octave in panic, ‘No crying, absolutely no crying…’

‘But this is my fault…’

‘I can’t argue with that, Clara,’ his words shocked her, ‘but if you cry you won’t be able to see the Angel clearly so stop it, stop it right away!’

He was right. She nodded and swallowed, the whole while staring the Angel in the eye.

‘Good,’ she heard him say, ‘Now, if I’m not back in ten minutes assume I lost the war….’ He edged past her and the angel, removing his eyes from it and looking back over his shoulder at Clara. ‘If I’m not back,’ he said again, ‘You’ve permission to shove her out and slam the door as you suggested. Run for it if I don’t make it because by then you might as well save yourself; London will be overrun… and I’ll be dead.’


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the Doctor did next.

First off, he slowed time, because there simply wasn’t enough of it to deal with the situation and Time is only relative after all. So, he slowed it, froze the moment and looked about him at the graveyard and the enemy. It looked worse now he was outside and the whole situation wasn’t sanitised by appearing on a screen like a movie. Out here he could not only see but feel the situation, the slowed cold breeze and the ground underfoot. He was immersed and it wasn’t looking very good for Team Who.

The Doctor took a few more paces forward until he stood between the first two lines of gravestones, the TARDIS at his back and the light from it spilling around the weeping angel in its doorway. Weeping Angels? How had they got involved apart from the sheer irresistibility of the situation. They didn’t like him either, any opportunity to make his life a misery, or indeed just kill for fun and they would be on it in a flash. He really had wracked up a lot of enemies in his lifetime and on reflection most of them would volunteer to help the Time Lords with their hunt or accept bribery without too much negotiation. He tried not to think of what else might get sent through the Time Rift if he wasn’t quick. Daleks, cybermen, reapers… his old friend the Veil?

He spun in a slow circle to check every corner of the graveyard before returning his gaze to the TARDIS. The current Angel was still frozen but it had expanded its wings a little to help to block the door. Behind them, was Clara. The Clara he had remembered only recently, back again as though summoned, searching for him as he had searched for her in each chip of memories. How cursed were they? A few minutes into their reunion, one kiss, and this was the outcome. Oh, the Time Lords must really want him. They must be on watch every moment, listening for Clara’s thoughts and feelings, waiting to spot him. He wished they would make up their minds. They spent eons chasing him and then they had armed him with a full set of regenerations. Did they want to kill him, torment him, or champion him? He could never be sure, but then he often felt just as conflicted about his so called home and its residents.

He had no time for pondering. The Doctor swept his eyes across the usually peaceful graveyard where Clara’s body lay and saw only danger now. The ranks of Judoon were marching at a lumbering but steady pace and he tracked them back across the ground to another light shining raggedly amongst the trees close to her Diner. The Time Rift, wide open, tall enough for the army to step through, wide enough to allow them to do so dozens at a time. He swallowed, it would take a lot to seal something that unstable, a lot of concentration and effort and that was a hard thing to sustain if fighting off that many alien soldiers.

And there was the small matter of getting close enough.

Well, Clara had been right about one thing, they were clumsy and slow, and he could be quick when he wanted to, if slightly inelegant. He would have to rely on the basics, out manoeuvre them if he could. Not a very advanced technique but he would take anything that worked and sometimes basics worked. He assessed the numbers. There were fewer of them he noticed on the left, on the side closest to the Diner they had damaged and given up on. He could see a gap and the darkness there was dense, the light from the time rift blocked by the trees and TARDIS. It was his best shot.

The Doctor unfroze relative time and ran.

He dipped between grave stones and through shadows, calculating the length of the graveyard and his average speed; he should make it to a position close enough to close the rift in approximately seventeen point three seconds. That was quick. Quicker than Judoon could manage. He surprised himself and nimbly hurdled a stone, smiled and laughed a little at this unexpected ability. This body had never exactly been athletic. This was going well, he could still put on a spurt of speed if needed, the old dog wasn’t done yet…

He ducked under a tree and came almost face to face with six Judoon, rounding on him as he slid to a halt before them, weapons levelled and shoulders set.

‘Ah,’ he said and held up his hands, his fingers wiggled nervously.

More heads turned in his direction and he heard the change in pace of the ongoing march behind him. Low grumbling and gurgles of interest. They were turning, as one, back towards him, missing a step and then coming back. Hundreds of them, he realised as he was presented with the stale breath of a Judoon General, now leaning over his target.

‘Hello,’ the Doctor said staring up at him, it, the creature far larger and taller than he had remembered Judoon being. He quickly scanned its uniform and weaponry. They had certainly had some input from the Time Lords, possibly biologically, which made him wonder just how long they had been employed in this chase, but certainly with weaponry. He could see Gallifreyan symbols on their guns. That did little to reassure him. Ordinary weapons were one thing. Gallifreyan ones could be more than capable of draining the life force straight out of him and leave him unable to regenerate. He was going to have to be careful.

And so too would Clara, he realised with a twinge.

He looked over the Judoon’s shoulder at the oncoming ranks of soldiers.

‘You know… you’ve found me now,’ he said, ‘Could we call off the invasion? I’ll come back to see your…er… commanders… if you stop your boys from overrunning London.’

_And my TARDIS. Which has Clara in it. Leave her alone._

The Judoon General just grunted, a snort like a rhinoceros, hot and stenching and grinned widely, the tough skin of its face creaking with the unusual use of musculature. The Doctor winced.

‘Why stop?’ it heaved out, ‘Invasion…. Bonus. Fun!’ It nodded towards the group of soldiers who had returned to witness the Doctor’s capture and sent them hobbling back towards the TARDIS and Clara. ‘Onward!’ it commanded.

There was no freezing time now, he had to act, without hesitation or reluctance. The rift was enormous, the best he could do was patch it. Behind him the Judoon were closing in on Clara, still holding a standoff between herself and the Angel, her newly refined Time Lady physiology going some way to help with the staring contest but it could only last so long. The clock was ticking down, if she did what he had told her to, the doors of the TARDIS would shut soon. At least he hoped the TARDIS, offended as she was by Clara and worried for him, would do the right thing for the woman he loved. He sent her a psychic message somewhere along the lines of ‘don’t let me down,’ but the ship was too far away to beam reassurance.

The Doctor switched focus. He measured distances again. From where he stood to the rift. Back to the TARDIS. He activated the screwdriver and emitted a high frequency the Judoon found hard to tolerate, watched distractedly as they clutched their heads. It was a delaying tactic. As they went to their knees he had only a few seconds to patch what he could of the rift and stem the flow of Judoon a little. The others were already recovering from the frequency so he sped up his work. He could feel the Time Lords power behind it as he wrestled with the closure but he managed something before two heavy arms grabbed at his and lifted him straight off the ground.

The Doctor was thrown back against a yew tree and winded as he collided with the trunk. He saw the General look back angriliy at the almost closed rift and then focus its attention sharply on the TARDIS. Clara could still be seen behind the angel and with a shout the General ordered a flood of Judoon towards her at a trotting pace. They would be on her in seconds.

‘Clara! The Door! Clara, go!’ he shouted across the graveyard hoping her new sensitive hearing would find his words. After a beat they seemed to and he felt a rush of panic that wasn’t his. The angel fell heavily backwards and the doors slammed shut just as a dozen Judoon crashed into the body of the TARDIS. They righted themselves, gathered some companions and ran again for it, believing he thought that they could knock down the entrance but he knew the TARDIS could withstand almost anything. Clara was inside she was safe, she was…

He looked up and found the General standing over him again with a lascivious grin. He was salivating.

‘Oh,’ the Doctor commented. ‘Um… right, we aren’t done yet… how rude of me.’ A small circle of Judoon were closing in on him. The General raised one hefty arm and held it before the Doctor. On its wrist he could see a psychic teleportation device, lent to him presumably by the Time Lords. ‘Ohh,’ the Doctor breathed with more levity that he had managed since the beginning of this battle, ‘I see, you’re to bring me back with you.’

‘Clever man,’ the General said and wrapped one huge hand around the Doctor’s unresisting wrist. ‘You come now to Time Lords and Judoon get paid. At last,’ it added with a hint of bitterness.

‘Right… yes well that sounds very reasonable. Very civilised arrangement,’ the Doctor said. ‘Please… go ahead.’

He smiled at his captor innocently and for a moment a flicker of something confused appeared in its face before it shrugged and pressed a button on the device.

There was a disconcerting undulation in space and time, associated with the cheaper less reliable versions of the transporters and time hopping devices, before the Doctor and his warden crash landed in the middle of a white room.

Except it wasn’t quite the white room the Judoon General had expected. In its shock it let go of the Doctor’s arm and in that moment the Time Lord took the opportunity to bind the creature with invisible sonic ties. Then he stood and leaned against the console, catching his breath and looking around him.

‘You could have decorated a little,’ he muttered, ‘Although I do like the classic look.’

The Judoon at his feet grunted in irritation so the Doctor leaned over it slightly.

‘Yes, sorry, didn’t they explain to you? That little device,’ he unhooked it from its wrist, ‘It’s very basic. Think of a destination and go there. It has to be simple for your rather primitive brain to get it to work and that was a nice idea but…. But you see I’m a Time Lord. My psychic ability far outweighs yours, is made for this technology in fact, and as such I was easily able to reroute the destination. Same timezone, slightly different place. We’ve only hopped a few yards really, but it gets me away from your lot for a while. Now you sit there quietly while I think what to do next...’ he began to circle the console, tapping it lightly with the fingers of one hand.

Clara had his TARDIS, and hopefully the Old Girl was being co-operative. He had her Diner, in need of superficial repairs but generally working. And London had rather a lot of Judoon and a scantily closed time rift in a graveyard. The Time Lords wouldn’t be happy with any of it and he had his hands full.

The Doctor swung a screen towards him and typed in a few formulae. He pursed his lips as he viewed the results and then sighed. This clear up was going to take a while.

And then the light on the coms grid lit up. He pressed a button.

‘Hello Clara,’ he said.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapped in each others TARDISes can they find a way to escape the Judoon and save London?

‘Doctor!’ her voice sounded higher than normal and slightly strained. The Doctor leaned forward on Clara’s white and stylish console with both elbows and half watched the Judoon General wriggle in its bindings as he spoke. He had managed to place it reasonably out of the way in one corner but the smell of it was still very much there. He psychically asked the TARDIS politely to suction the stench out and purify the air.

‘Clara, is everything OK?’ he asked calmly, might as well be calm in the face of several levels of problem, ‘Doors nice and secure? Shields up?’

‘Doors very secured, I don’t think she will ever let them open again after the weeping Angel,’ he could hear her breathing faster from anxiety, ‘Shields? Um… shields, where would I find those?’ she finished in a tiny voice.

‘Same place as you find them on your own ship…’

‘Um…’

‘Clara you _do_ have shields?’

‘I think so, Ashildr usually does that bit, I do the steering, piloting… I mean I programme the destination.’

He rolled his eyes.

‘Shields… which are an important part of every day travel as well as when under attack, are on the console,’ he said slowly, ‘across from the lever that…’

‘Oh! Yes! Got it!’ he heard her squeak triumphantly, then a pause. ‘Nothing’s happening.’

‘Have you got the right button?’ He glanced at the screen above him to see her demonstrating which she had pressed and then looked at the scene outside where dozens of Judoon warriors were milling around the TARDIS. His old girl standing alone against the vile army. He narrowed his eyes. He could detect the faintest aura around it, the dullest light.

‘She’s done it for you,’ he said. ‘Automatically put the shields up to the right level.’

‘Oh… right…. I would have managed but… that’s nice of her,’ Clara sounded put out and he hoped very much it didn’t translate psychically to the ship now that her Time Lady brain was more in tune with the TARDIS circuitry. He could really do without it taking against her and chucking her out.

‘Clara you didn’t have the shields up on your ship when you landed did you?’ the Doctor asked frowning.

‘No, why would I?’

‘Never mind it’s just…well it might have saved a bit of damage, your Diner is a mess.’

‘It’ll tidy itself up,’ Clara said dismissively. ‘Always does if you wait long enough.’

‘Clara!’ his tone was horrified, ‘Don’t speak like that about your TARDIS!’

‘Like what?’

‘Like she’s completely immune to this. Like she is an object! She needs empathy, care, sensitivity. How can you ever expect to have a good relationship with her if you treat her this way? She’s been hurt, from your negligence with the shields, your lack of forethought…’

‘She could have put them up herself!’ Clara said testily, her shock from the diatribe tightening her speech. ‘If it was such a big deal!’

The Doctor dropped his eyes to the console already certain of what he would see there, ‘No, she couldn’t,’ he sighed tiredly. ‘You’ve got her on manual override she can’t select anything. You are such a control freak, even when you’re driving a spaceship. My God Clara how have you survived until now?’

‘I had the advantage of being frozen in time… its much harder to die when your death is preordained…’ the screen changed above him and the image of Clara sitting at his own console appeared. He watched her adjust her position and felt an immediate stab of pain at her words.

He had done that to her. Fixed her point of death and left her in the moment before its conclusion. She could stay there forever in theory, unfeeling, unkillable, living an empty existence. Now here she was reanimated. Beating hearts, breathing lungs, adrenaline and hormones pumping around her body. He hadn’t got used to her again yet, to her in the flesh and not just in restored memory, but he knew she looked exactly the same as she had that moment on Trap Street and that only brought him agony.

Clara didn’t appear aware of his scrutiny, but looked rather flustered and spent the first few minutes on screen trying to tame her hair, smoothing it down and then trying to get control of her worry. ‘Sorry, sorry, this is all just a bit of a surprise,’ she said as he watched her, ‘The Judoon bit, not expecting that… the beacon across space…. News to me, but you know… worse things have happened at sea, we can deal… that’s what we do. At least I’m not dead again.’

The Doctor gave her a sympathetic look. ‘It’s not how I would have planned this reunion either. And I suppose you weren’t to know that if you landed here there would be trouble… although after our experience at my own grave you’d think it would occur to you.’ He couldn’t resist but to add a nod towards his incredibly mild frustration at her.

‘Stop lecturing me!’

‘I’m just saying…’

‘Well don’t,’ she folded her arms and looked off camera, ‘Shut up.’

Clara stayed that way for a moment too long and he could feel himself chuckling internally at her bossy, control freak, pouty, sulky self as her lips twitched and gave her away. She caved in and looked back at him.

‘This is stupid,’ she giggled. ‘We should be on that couch still with the coffee, and the other things…’ he felt himself blush at her words. Another thing he wasn’t used to yet. He had only kissed Clara once before and now it seemed she was clearly keen to repeat the experience and he was on a different ship in the middle of a battlefield. Obstacles. Always obstacles.

‘What do we do now?’ she asked when the pause become long and he was clearly distracted.

‘I have an idea but you might not like it,’ he resumed.

‘Oh?’ she asked looking interested.

‘I need something that’s going to affect hundreds of soldiers at once. Looking through your TARDIS records…’ he pointed his screwdriver at the console, ‘You don’t carry any weapons….’

‘No, neither do you!’

‘I don’t need to!’

‘Neither do I!’ she protested.

‘Clara you’ve been leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable for decades, on manual, no weapons, frozen until recently. How have you made it this far? Is Ashildr any more use with this stuff?’

‘Never mind just tell me your idea,’ she said shortly.

‘My idea… yes… well you don’t have any weapons, the range of this TARDIS isn’t great as there have been no decent upgrades, and the Judoon are… ah…’ he looked back at the outside feed, minimising Clara’s face to one small corner of the screen.

‘Ah, what?’ she asked reading his worried tone.

‘they seem to be crowded around your, I mean _my,_ I mean the police box version of the TARDIS.’

‘Why?’

‘You. Beacon.’

‘But they know you are here. There. Not in this one,’ she clarified.

‘They’re confused. They only have tiny brains, they think I would automatically head back to the Old Girl, or transport myself from here to there… or something. They associated the blue one with me and can’t think around it.’

‘So what… they’re going to attack me instead?’ Clara’s eyes widened.

‘It’s a good thing,’ he replied.

‘What?!’

‘You’re fine, my TARDIS is impenetrable… she’s had her upgrades and you know about siege mode if things get very bad, which they won’t. Just sit it out, it’ll be noisy probably but that’s it. And well she can take out a bunch of them while I…’

‘While you…?’

‘Well… Outside I used a sonic frequency the Judoon find painful to stop them in their tracks. All I need to do is find a way of magnifying that and it will cripple them.’

‘When you say cripple them?’ Clara checked with suspicion, she always could tell when he was up to something that would not win one hundred percent approval.

‘I mean render them unable to continue.’

‘That’s a very evasive way of describing it…’ Clara commented as the first bangs of Judoon weapons on the walls of the TARDIS began behind her.

‘Yes…’ The Doctor replied evasively.

‘Tell me….? How will it ‘cripple them?’

He looked up at the screen briefly and then pretended to be very interested in a switch.

‘It will er… blow their heads open,’ he said quickly as her jaw dropped in horror, ‘but desperate times…’ he risked looking back at her and found that she had begun sniggering into the back of her hand.

‘You’re going to explode the Judoons’ heads?’ she tittered.

‘Yes…. But…’

‘Oh Doctor that’s going to be messy!’ she was laughing hard now and it was as contagious as it had ever been. He was chuckling again even as the Judoon General glared at him from the corner.

‘Shouldn’t we find another way?’ she suggested weakly.

‘I didn’t realise you were so attached to the giant gnarly alien rhinoceros species who kills for money and can be hired for a fee by angry Time Lords? I’m so sorry, I wasn’t aware, would you like me to simply suggest to them they pack up and go home peacefully, thus abandoning their quest to finish me off and giving up their no doubt massive reward?’

Clara managed to keep a straight face for a moment. ‘No, no suggestion of that, please carry on.’

‘Right,’ he said, ‘Carry on. I’ll tap into the central console auditory system and prepare it for the frequency magnification.’

‘She’s not always the most co-operative with upgrades and things,’ Clara said, ‘Ashildr fights with her every time.’

‘Do you ask her politely?’ the Doctor said lowering himself to the ground and gently running one palm over a panel. ‘I mean if you went to the human doctor and he just dived in there to take your appendix out or examine you intimately in some way you might not be so welcoming either.’ The panel slid open with a soft woosh. On screen Clara’s eyebrows shot up.

‘I never thought of it that way,’ she pulled a face. ‘That wouldn’t be pleasant actually. Sorry!’ she said to the camera, ‘Tell her I’m sorry.’

‘She can hear you.’

‘Ok, sorry... sorry...’ Behind her the thumping noises grew louder. ‘Can’t they tell they aren’t going to get anywhere? Doors sealed, TARDIS impenetrable. Oh wait you said, not very clever, tiny brains.’

‘Indeed,’ the Doctor pulled himself under the console and began working on the correct circuit. ‘But they just keep going regardless of outcome a lot of the time. They’re like automatons but very large and very leathery.’

The circuit board was primitive to say the least which rather surprised him given he had stolen that TARDIS from the end of the universe where TARDISes were common place and advanced. Still it gave him a better chance of adapting it and he should be able to adjust what he needed to magnify the signal and finish off all the Judoon.

It was going to be messy though. He’d have to remember to put the General outside before he triggered it or the whole console room would need a spectacular clean up and redecoration and he wouldn’t be off to a good start with the Diner TARDIS. He made a mental note to himself to help with the clean up of the damage the Judoon had caused her to get a little further in her good books.

Clara seemed to be letting him concentrate for a while but after a few minutes piped up through the speakers.

‘Doctor?’

‘Hmm?’ he answered, screwdriver between his teeth.

‘I’ve been sitting here looking at your prisoner…’

‘Um-mmph.’

‘He’s the General yes?’

He removed the screwdriver and lay looking up at wires. It was proving trickier than he had first imagined and he needed to focus.

‘Yes he’s the General, he has all the badges and authority.’

‘So he gives the orders?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor answered with mild irritation and fused a wire, sparks flying.

‘The orders he gets from the Time Lords?’

‘Yes …’

‘And are his army bound to follow them?’

‘Yes disobeying orders from the General is punishable by death. Just as disobeying orders from the peoples who have hired you for their purpose is…’

The Doctor froze suddenly. ‘Wait…’

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asked smugly.

‘That I don’t need to explode their heads?’

‘Which admittedly is the more dramatic way of doing this….’

‘But less moral…less humane…’ he agreed and shot out from under the console, springing up and grinning at the screen. ‘Well done Clara! All we need to do is command the army to crawl back through the gaps in the rift and go away.’

‘You need to persuade the General first…’ she said.

‘Yes…’ the Doctor glanced at him. ‘General! Who gave you, your orders?’ The bound and grumpy General of the Judoon glowered at him and grumbled.

‘The Time Lords.’

‘Which Time Lords?’ the Doctor asked lightly.

The huge creature shrugged. ‘Time Lords. All Time Lords…. Took contract from Time Lords, home planet, Gallifrey.’

The Doctor struggled to supress his glee.

‘So you currently owe allegiance to Time Lords, _all_ …Time Lords. If you do as you are told you get paid. If you go against their orders you risk execution.’

It grunted a positive response. The Doctor looked up at the screen and winked before stepping forward to heave the General up and propel him towards the door to the Diner.

‘Where? Going Where?’ the foul Judoon asked.

‘Oh you and I are taking a little walk, nowhere too far, just over to that Rift again, you know I’ve always prided myself on ways to avoid war, bloodshed… death in general if I can.’

The things massive brows furrowed. ‘I don’t understand.’

The Doctor and his enemy stepped out of the Diner and faced the hundreds of Judoon outside. He hoped that one or both TARDISes were broadcasting he scene to Clara, he did so like to show off for her and make her smile. He patted the General on the shoulder.

‘Don’t worry your um… pretty little head about it,’ he said jovially, ‘All that matters is that you are working for _all_ the Time Lords…’

‘Yes…’

‘And I _am_ a Time Lord…’ he gestured towards his chest where his two hearts beat triumphantly. ‘As is my friend in the other ship,’ he pointed.

‘…Yes…’ the General said doubtfully. ‘She, Time Lord. You, Target…’

‘ _And a T_ ime Lord,’ the Doctor added quickly, increasing the Judoon’s confusion to new unscaled levels. It shook its head as though in pain and the Doctor smirked; this had to be better than the exploding plan. If it thought its head ached now…

So the Doctor ploughed on taking advantage of that doubt. ‘We, Clara and I, we, as two Time Lords, are ordering you to take your army home…’ he finished and pointed the sonic at one end of the Rift opening a section just wide enough for two Judoon side by side to enter.

The Judoon stopped in its tracks and gawped, looking from the Doctor to his army and back.

‘Time Lord orders….’ It muttered ineffectually. ‘But… cannot disobey…’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in mock politeness. ‘Orders are orders… off you pop,’ he said, sweeping one hand towards the rift in encouragement, ‘I’ve even opened the gate.’


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can they risk saying together or are the Time Lords already on their way?

Clara laid both hands on the white paint of the TARDIS doors and closed her eyes. She was trying very hard to think grateful thoughts alongside a simple open sesame. Around her the TARDIS was lowering her security settings now that the Judoon were gone but she seemed in no rush to open the doors. Eventually Clara’s patience waned and she stamped her foot hard.

‘Come on!’

The doors flew open and the TARDIS ejected a stream of smelly steam at her feet.

‘Don’t worry I’m out of here,’ Clara muttered. She couldn’t stay angry however as she stepped outside. To begin with she had half an eye out for the weeping Angel she had shoved over but it seemed to have vanished when confronted with the army of rhinoceros. Then, reassured nothing alien was posing any threat right at that moment, her eyes lighted on the Doctor, standing just off from her own battered Diner, closing the hole in the rift he had opened minutes before.

He had his back to her and wore that familiar jacket that brought back warm memories. Clara grinned and trotted through the gravestones before closing in and pouncing, her arms around his middle. He startled and looked down at her over his shoulder before allowing one of his rare beaming miles to emerge.

‘I think you’ll find I may not be the best with TARDIS shields but I come up with good ideas,’ Clara said with self satisfaction. ‘I’ve been travelling a while, on the odd adventure, some might say I’ve picked up a few techniques to get out of danger.’ He gave her a long suffering smile.

‘Yes, yes, very clever, I think you’ll find I taught you most of those… now let me finish sealing this up and then I will _heap_ you with praise…’

‘And reward,’ she added coquettishly perching on a gravestone, ‘I need a reward.’

‘Oh I will reward you,’ he lowered his voice and looked at her hard and she felt her face flush a little. Since when did he do that? That look? She supposed he had been alone a long time; that need and want had built up inside of him. The thought made her feel a little weak. All that need was about to be unleashed in her direction. Time Lord style. She was pretty sure that was going to be unprecedented. She pondered as he turned and carried on fixing the rift, stretching high, elongating his body. Her gaze wandered much more than it ever used to as he moved.

Had he been alone all this while? She wondered as she watched. In the confession dial billions of years had passed, the thought of her had kept him focused. Since his release from it not so many years, but she was suddenly certain she didn’t want him to spend a minute more alone than necessary. She hoped he’d found companionship, maybe even love.

No, _love,_ she did mean love.

That was a tricky one to swallow. She was prone to jealousy but she knew he deserved the affection he craved but never admitted to wanting. She knew that and she understood him. He had loved her enough to destroy worlds; she loved him enough to let him go. Now here they were again pushing armies back through holes in time and space like it was nothing. Dangerous games.

Judoons were one thing. Simple minded creatures that obeyed orders, but on the other side of that rift she knew now there were Time Lords, Time Lords that wanted the Doctor for punishment or worse. Who quite possibility wanted her too. Who were using her mind to track the man she loved. Was she broadcasting now? Would they hear? Would they send another army? Who this time?

Clara felt a cold sweat break out on her forehead and steadied herself against the stone she perched on. She glanced up at the Doctor who seemed to be taking too long to seal the rift. The first time although he could only patch it he had done it in minutes, now it dragged. She watched the time fibres bind and unravel again as he attempted to keep up a flow of energy. She could hear him making small noises of exertion, panting and cursing from time to time.

‘You ok?’ she asked hesitantly not wanting to break his concentration.

‘Little… more difficult… than I thought…’ he strained.

She fell silent, watched him struggle another minute. Then it came to her. Obvious!

‘Wait!’ she suddenly pushed away from the stone and came to his side. She could see by the blue light of the sonic he was sweating at the temples, his brow furrowed and teeth gritted.

‘Clara… I need to… focus…’ she saw the sonic pull against him like it was drawn by a magnet; he wrestled it back to point at the still pulsing rift.

‘No, wait…’ she said and dug in her pocket, ‘I can help.’

‘Help how? Clara you may be a Time Lady but…’

‘I know I’m not educated in the ways of your people,’ she teased and he glanced at her irritated at which point the sonic juddered and another few time strands unwound. He looked back at the rift in despair.

Clara pulled out the thing she had been looking for and put it on. He caught the movement in the corner of his eye and looked back at her. She grinned.

‘Sunglasses,’ she said, ‘Sonic ones. Still work, now let’s do this together.’

She gripped his hand where he held the sonic and raised it so that the screwdriver was levelled at the most unstable part of the rift. Then she followed its line of fire with her eyes, the sunglasses adding their own power as she controlled them with her mind, better than she ever had as a human, precisely and powerfully. The beams from the two objects combined and the rift shuddered.

In a minute it had knit together but despite further efforts from both of them still would not seal completely. Clara might have suggested another try but when she folded her hand around his again she felt a push of emotion. The Doctor was exhausted, so exhausted he couldn’t shield the feeling from her. She looked at him curious. It was odd to read that feeling so clearly.

‘You’re… you’re really drained,’ she said in concern, ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’

He smiled sadly, ‘Downloading memories…’ he explained. Clara tilted her head at him.

‘Memories of me?’ she asked with a tone that would tell him she knew the answer already, ‘I think you’ve got a story to tell me, mister.’

‘A story?’

‘Yes, I need to know what happened, with you, with the memories, with what you did afterwards.’

‘You need to know? You don’t need to know any of it Clara, its passed,’ he stood watching the rift pulse in the darkness, the faintest light coming from it, but enough to indicate its existence to those who suspected it was there.

Clara pulled on his hand, ‘I think I know some stuff, I can guess other bits, but I want the lot.’

‘Greedy…’ he warned moving away from the rift.

‘I need to understand you,’ she explained tugging him back a little. ‘You and I have this awful habit, we lie, we dissemble, we hide things from the other because we care, and it never works. I don’t want to miss a thing; I don’t want any surprises. We have to share it all. Doctor, we are still the Hybrid…’

She saw him straighten his back defensively and look skyward. ‘Not this, not now… let me have one night where that isn’t hanging over us…’

’But it _is_ hanging over us. Look at what has just happened within minutes, hours of us being reunited.’

He sagged right there in front of her and she heard his breath escape him. ‘Yes,’ he said. HI voice held absolute sadness and resignation.

‘You said yourself we have the same problems now we did before, the Hybrid and the prophecy, as well as a bunch of angry Time Lords following my signal across the universe to get to you,’ Clara said, ‘We need to work out what to do, and to do that I have to understand the bits I’ve missed, your experiences since Trap Street, since the Cloisters. I have to understand what all of this has done and how you tick. The same for you, no more lies, no more miscommunications and ‘well meaning’ actions,’ we are a clear honest unit.’

She could see him wrestling with himself. ‘The more you speak,’ he said, ‘The more I think there isn’t a solution to this. That they will chase you down until they find you if you are anywhere near me, that you are their sacrificial pawn and your role is already laid out. The only way this will ends if I go to them voluntarily.’

Clara stepped forward and took both his hands. ‘No, no that’s not happening.’

‘Then you have to keep running, away from me, go, take your TARDIS and keep moving,’ he told her, ‘That’s the alternative.’

She shook her head hard, ‘No, that’s not an alternative either.’ He looked at her like she had gone mad.

‘Clara if we stay together…’

‘They will come after us… ‘

‘If you are running from me at least…’ he said.

‘Then I’ve all of Time and Space to hide in,’ Clara answered, ‘But that’s no use to me when it’s you I want?’

‘I will bring nothing but worry and problems to you,’ he warned. Clara smiled softly.

‘Don’t you always?’ she laughed, ‘Isn’t that why it’s so much fun? So exciting?’

‘So dangerous? Look at what happened before… don’t start telling me about the excitement, that was your undoing…’

‘We are different now,’ Clara said still holding both his hands, ‘I’m not reckless now I’ve had the pleasure of actually dying.’ She saw him wince. ‘And I have faith in us. I am not going to travel for hundreds of years on my own without you. I don’t care if the Time Lords send every species of alien they can after us, we will manage, we always manage; when it’s both of us together.’

He pressed his lips together and looked down at their joined hands. ‘Clara, if anything were to happen…’

‘Shh,’ she stood on tiptoe and kissed him gently, pulling way as he released his hands and slipped them around her waist. ‘I have been lonely since the day you pulled me from my timeline.’

His face fell further.

‘Nothing I do makes up for the fact I’m not with you,’ she carried on. ‘And I don’t say that to make you feel bad it’s just a fact.’

‘I hid away your memories…’ he said quietly, ‘I knew I couldn’t live with them and now I have them back… I…’ he bit his lower lip and looked to one side. ‘I know I should send you away, or sacrifice myself but…’

‘Be selfish, just this once,’ she said. ‘Try for the thing you want, that’s what I’m doing.’

He looked at her doubtfully for a moment before nodding slowly.

‘We’re a team,’ Clara said, her arms now around his neck, ‘So let’s work as one. Let’s start with a marathon catch up. We were rudely interrupted before…’

‘We need to move before we do that,’ the Doctor said, looking between the two TARDISes, ‘Do something with these and stop the Time Lords from following straight away.’

‘Ok, sounds like a plan….’ Clara said jigging on the spot to demonstrate her enthusiasm, ‘What do you need me to do?’

The Doctor raised one hand to her cheek and softly stroked her skin, he was smiling at first as though he might bend and kiss her, but then worry passed abruptly through his features. Clara felt for a moment like he was looking straight into her head, frowning, reading something there, leafing through her memories like pages in a book.

‘Doctor?’

She felt him stop searching her consciousness, and draw back suddenly. He stared at her horrified and as she reached for him again she heard the whispers of a dozen others fade from her mind rapidly, hiding swiftly. They feared detection and were desperate to remain unseen.

‘Doctor?’ she said again, alarmed.

‘Stop thinking….’ He instructed in a whisper. ‘They can hear you.’


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where can they go now? The Doctor tries to keep Clara safe.

The colour had drained from her face; he could see that even in the darkness of the graveyard. Clara raised her hands to her ears and temples but never took her eyes from his.

‘What do you mean?’ she stammered, ‘What do you mean they can hear me? Hear what exactly?’

‘Time Lords,’ he said retrieving her hands and holding them securely in his own. ‘You’re one of them now remember. One of _us_. We are touch telepaths primarily and can use that skill with other species but over the millennia we have honed it amongst our own kind. If we know who or what we are searching for we can track it… for miles, across time and space, and they are tracking you as you know….’

‘But _listening_ to me?’ Clara’s voice sounded panicky. ‘It’s one thing being the Beacon, I know they are aware of me…that if I am near you they will find you, that they even have the potential to make me do things… and I’m so looking forward to that by the way, being possessed,’ she added sarcastically, ‘but this? Total mind reading?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘It’s more detailed than perhaps I explained to you before,’ he replied with some measure of guilt. Clara pulled a face which told him that he really ought to have mentioned it.

‘My actual thoughts?’ she checked again, ‘My actual words in my head?’

‘Yes, particularly anything pertaining to me,’ he said.

This only seemed to heighten her anxiety, ‘Particularly…Like _all_ of them?’ Clara’s pale face turned a light shade of pink and she glanced away. The Doctor caught a wave of something from her that made his skin tingle for a second until she recovered herself and tried to stop the thoughts as he had suggested.

‘And that whispering I can hear, that I heard there, that’s them?’ she asked turning back to him.

He nodded sadly, ‘Yes, that’s them, backing off quickly in the hope I didn’t find them and that you don’t hear that it was a two way link back to Gallifrey.’

Clara stared wide eyed at a random gravestone behind the Doctor. ‘Ok… so I can hear them too if they aren’t careful?’

‘Yes, but they are masters of telepathy, the likelihood of them letting their guard down is well…. Unlikely,’ he said weakly.

‘Great, unfair advantage,’ she said with a resigned sigh, ‘So…. Where does this leave us?’

The Doctor drew a deep breath himself and rattled off a list. ‘Psychic connection, untrained brand new Time Lady, potential for mind control, slightly broken TARDIS in the form of a conspicuous and difficult to park Diner that hasn’t been upgraded, massive time rift only moderately sealed at best, angry Time Lords probably deciding who to send after us next and…’

‘Weeping Angel,’ Clara said.

‘And there was a Weeping Angel too,’ he finished.

‘No, I mean,’ she stared behind him, ‘ _Weeping Angel_ ,’ she said meaningfully.

The Doctor whipped around and came face to face with the same Angel that had threatened Clara earlier, wings spread and teeth bared. Its claw like hands were inches from his eyes.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘Let’s just remain calm and head towards um…’

‘Your TARDIS?’ she suggested.

‘Quite far away,’ he countered, ‘Yours is just behind us…’ he took a step backward and felt himself bump against her.

‘But its broken and according to you hasn’t go the right upgrades…’

‘Clara will you stop repeating that, it wasn’t a criticism, not really….’

‘Doctor! I don’t think you can criticise me about TARDIS upkeep, you’ve been driving yours for centuries and still cant get it to change from a police box to something more modern….’

‘I like the police box, its nostalgic,’ he said creeping backwards a little more.

‘You’re stuck with it you mean?’

‘Well you’re stuck with the ridiculous neon diner!’ he said irritably and glanced at her in annoyance determined to give her the eyebrows and silence their petty argument.

‘Doctor! Angel!’ she squealed and he spun back to look at it, thankful she had had the good sense not to remove her stare from its contorted features.

‘Oh right yes…. Let’s keep heading to your…’

‘Ridiculous neon diner?’ she growled.

‘Yes,’ he said faintly.

‘Isn’t it a bit tacky for you?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed and felt a surge of anger from her, ‘But its close by and there’s a weeping angel staring at me. I’d rather get to safety than hazard falling over a tombstone while I walk backwards to my ship and end up being consumed by this thing.’

‘Glad you’ve got your priorities straight even if it means the embarrassment of my TARDIS.’

‘Clara can we just move please, I think it might have company, I don’t want to look but given that this is a graveyard there might be a few hanging around and… do you hear that shuffling?’

They waited breath held for a moment as they listened with heightened Time Lord hearing.

‘Yes… yes I do, there’s more of them!’ Clara confirmed and he felt her hand in his, tugging him back to the broken glass door of her ship, ‘Let’s go!’

XXXXXXXXX

All she could see of the Doctor was a pair of legs sticking out from under her brilliant white console. Clara sipped on her coffee and listened to him swear to himself as he hit his thumb, rapidly followed by an apology for his language aimed not at herself but at the ship.

‘Sorry my dear, we’re still getting used to each other aren’t we? I do appreciate what you’re doing for us…’ he prattled.

Clara rolled her eyes. ‘I thought TARDISes were psychic?’ she asked, ‘You could just think all these nauseating compliments and platitudes… spare me the details.’

A sigh from under the console. ‘They are psychic but this model only has the basics because…’

‘Don’t tell me, I haven’t got it the right upgrades?’

‘She… I mean her… you haven’t got her the upgrade _she_ needs,’ he corrected. ‘You really have been quite disinterested in her, Clara, she’s miserable. Lonely, untended and hopeless…’ he sounded for a moment like he might actually weep if he went on. Talk about over empathising.

‘I can’t believe you are accusing me of making my ship depressed,’ Clara grumbled.

‘I’m just saying she needs a little TLC… pass me that wire.’

Clara hopped off the seat and passed the Doctor a long purple wire. He briefly slid from under the console to receive it and waved it at her knowingly.

‘Thank you, we’re nearly there. This should set up a forcefield around us enough to disrupt psychic communication from outside of the ship. You and I can still practice…’

‘Practice what?’ Clara said curiously.

‘Learning to block them out. Learning to moderate and control thoughts emotions and memories. The stuff you would have got at the Academy, using and taming your abilities, accentuating some bits, reducing others… its basics but you haven’t got them and without that knowledge…’

‘I’m a puppet?’

‘Yes,’ she saw him slide back under the console with a rather pained look on his face. @i wouldn’t like to think hat they are capable of…’

‘So we’re going to have a telepathy lesson or two?’ she asked, ‘Cool.’

‘This is serious Clara, you can’t spend the rest of your considerable days behind a forcefield.’

She sat back more comfortably in her seat and finished her coffee. ‘No I guess not. Is it hard, this stuff? To pick up? I mean has my brain er… is it… is it capable of it?’

The Doctor pulled himself back out from where he was working, climbed up and stood straight in front of her. ‘It’s a time lord brain now, Clara, just like you have two time lord hearts. You’ve undergone the conversion and there’s no going back from it. It will soak up the information it needs and learn the skills, and….and it will come as a shock when it does. You won’t believe what it is capable of, what it can do, what it will show you.’ She watched as he bit his lip. ‘That will eb the hardest part…’

‘Ok you’re being vague again, I don’t like it when you’re vague,’ Clara said.

He looked up, ‘I promise you I will do everything I can to make this as easy as possible for you,’ he said, ‘But you will be afraid, probably most of the time to start with and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry they ever did this to you.’

‘Well I’m not,’ Clara said, ‘because being frozen was worse. I’ll learn how to deal with this and anyway, why afraid?’ she asked, ‘What kind of odd things will happen? More stuff like those voices?’

‘Yes, more of that and other things,’ he sighed.

‘Well that’s not too bad, if I’m forewarned…’

Her optimism didn’t seem to be reaching him. Clara frowned deeper. He was always a worrier. Perhaps his fears were exaggerated or unfounded because he was still feeling so guilty. She tried a new tact.

‘Are you sure about all this because I don’t feel that different after the ceremony. I’ve sort of been waiting for this big reveal but apart from unfreezing me the elixir hasn’t done a whole lot and the schism, it was pretty but… In didn’t see all the stuff about time that they said I might.’

She watched him run his hand along the console and wondered what he and the ship were saying to each other. Finally he looked up with moist eyes.

‘No… no you wouldn’t at that point, your brain was raw and untrained. The schism would fail to connect with you, you had no capacity to read what it showed you. Think of it like a computer,’ he said. ‘The new software has been downloaded but not installed. What we are doing is…’

‘Installation time, ok I get it. I’ve been kicking about with the files ready but no technician to get them up and running for me? Am I going too far with the metaphor?’ she tried to lighten the mood but all she could feel was a gloom settling over her still brilliantly lit console room.

‘Clara, you feel things are alright just now because so far little in you has changed. You think like a human because it’s all you’ve ever known and you haven’t been…I don’t know… activated yet.…’ There was something terribly sad in his face just for a moment and seemingly on impulse he reached for her hand. ‘That moment, when graduates look into the schism and their minds are ready to accept what it offers them… it drives some mad, its too much for others. People die, Clara, the burden of it is too much… I remember when I saw it… when I realised the responsibility, the weight of it…I just wanted to run… I did run didn’t I?’

She could feel his anxiety through his hands, and feel her double heartbeat fall into line with his own accelerated pulse.

‘What are you saying? I won’t cope?’ she asked nervously.

‘You’re Clara Oswald, you’re the bravest person I know,’ he said, ‘But even you might find it… difficult.’

‘Difficult how? You’re scaring me a bit, what will be difficult?’

‘Time, space, all of it… infinity….’

‘I don’t think I can imagine infinity,’ she said honestly

‘You’re not human now,’ the Doctor said, ‘your mind has no limits when it comes to space and time. You will find yourself in the centre of it and you will see everything…. It’s….it can be….’ He stopped and looked away from her. ‘If you aren’t ready, if you aren’t equipped…’ he trailed off.

Clara shook her head. ‘No, I feel human, I mean I know I can hear better, see better, I’ve got a couple of extra organs going on,’ she quipped but his face remained without humour, ‘But I’m still _me_ right?’

‘Yes, still you.’

‘So I _will_ deal with it,’ she said assuredly trying to ignore the wobble in her voice, ‘I will. Whatever _it_ is,’ she added uncertainly. ‘Let’s be positive. I have you to help me, the best teacher I could have. When do we have our first lesson?’

The Doctor watched her for a moment longer as though trying to gauge her strength. Finally he nodded and tapped co-ordinates out on the white console behind him.

‘Well the shields are up, the forcefield is on, there no time like the present, or the past or the future,’ he smiled at her sideways, ‘Take your pick…’ Clara smiled at him relieved that he looked less worried. ‘Let’s get away from here first,’ he went on, pick a destination, hole up somewhere for a while and walk you through the basics so you can get the Time Lords off your back a bit.’

‘What about your TARDIS?’ Clara asked.

‘Oh she’ll follow, I’ve been speaking with her through your ship. They’re making friends, its rather nice for them both after so long alone.’

Clara raised an eyebrow doubtfully, ‘Okay,’ she drawled. ‘So where are we off to?’

The Doctor pulled the lever in front of him and the engines started. ‘Somewhere ancient, somewhere beautiful…’ he said and fixed her with impossibly blue eyes, ‘Somewhere they won’t think to look.’


End file.
